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I am halfway through my Edinburgh Fringe! Six whole days of working one hour a day without a day off. No wonder I feel like I am almost dead.
We went to the Comedy Club 4 Kids this evening which was a lot of fun, though children rebel against their parents and I seem to have created the enemy of the comedian as my son is definitely a heckler. Randy Feltface was on first, who had the distinct disadvantage of being a puppet and his operator was hiding behind a screen and couldn’t see his audience. He wasn’t exactly losing his audience, as he was doing a good set, but kids like to be involved and were shouting stuff out at him, which was hard for him to hear. The puppeteer I mean, although thinking about it it was even harder for the puppet to hear. Ernie started persistently calling him a “Dummy Head” and Randy had to get him to say it four or five more times before he understood. It was true. He did have a dummy head. And then the other kids started calling him it too. It was mayhem. It made him change from being a maggot version of himself, back to a normal version. Heckling can hurt. Even puppets. The chaos was quite frightening even from the audience, but Randy stayed focused and did a great job and won everyone round with an impression of a turtle.
This was comedy in its purest form and the acts were very much “Yes and” to all the interruptions, especially the improv group that closed the show. They got kids up to make up stories that they then had to improvise around and they got some good stream of consciousness stuff, as well as stuff about toilets, which was probably the most successful part of the show.
I am not sure I am quite ready for a return to adult stand up, so I am definitely not ready for this much harder job of doing stand up for kids, but maybe one day I will have the right stuff. What if someone calls me a Dummy Head? Could I do 20 minutes without swearing?
The kids did some flyering for me today. I wasn’t there but they took some leaflets and gave them out. Phoebe proudly told me that she gave out 8 flyers and Ernie gave out 5. So that should make all the difference. But I should put them to work. They give out flyers without judgement or profile, which is good for equality, but a waste of leaflets as RHLSTP will probably not appeal to Chinese tourists who can’t really speak English. But you never know…
And the first Edinburgh podcast is now up online. It feels like a lifetime ago that this was recorded, but it as recorded five days ago. What is it with time and the Fringe? It’s with the unique and hilarious Harriet Dyer who is getting great reviews and rightly so
https://play.acast.com/s/rhlstp/rhlstp-393-harriet-dyer
